Better start planning for the divorce

Dov Fischer writes in part in Spectator,

...We all knew that we save a few bucks on every iPhone, on every pair of Kaepernick-endorsed and LeBron-hustled Nikes we buy, because these Left-Democrat companies all evade labor unions and the American worker to get dirt-cheap labor from bat-eaters. As Americans, we all contributed, with willing suspension of knowledge, to this game. Along the way, we became a country Made in China. One industry after another moved there, to get away from mandatory union contracts and from paying for American-required “entitlements” so we could employ bat-eaters on the cheap. We thought we are safe forever, so we can move even our aluminum factories to China, our steel production, almost our national security. We even moved our pharmaceuticals to China.

...The list of filthy-food incidents with China is huge. But we all wanted to save a buck on our iPhones, on our underwear, and on the toys we buy for birthdays and Christmas presents.

...We all have known all along that they cheat. They steal our intellectual property — over $200 billion worth of American business and technology secrets every year. They dumped cheap steel in England to drive British competitors out of the market. They dumped so much cheap steel into America that our industry had to lay off 13,500 workers four years ago during Obama’s last year. Yet any of our businesses that want to operate there have to agree that China nationals get majority ownership. We all have gone along with this manifest evil to save a few bucks on batteries, light bulbs, and string lights.

...President Trump’s tariffs have forced trade concessions from China, but not nearly enough. After November, he will have only four years left to win the trade war with China. And especially to get our aluminum, steel, and pharmaceuticals — all critical to national security — made here.

...Just as he has inspired millions to believe in a great America again, the President will have a brief window to create a national consciousness that Americans with a conscience gladly pay the extra cost, if any, for products made just as cheaply outside of China. Thus, for example, if Nike is to remain invested in Colin Kaepernick and in China, then at least half the country needs to be inspired to a consciousness that proud Americans do not wear Nike and should be ashamed to wear anything with that logo.

...Yes, tomorrow and the day after we still will need to focus on coronavirus and on restarting our economy. But the day will come soon enough when that is behind us. We then will have a very narrow and fleeting moment — with cash flowing back into Americans’ pockets and with a nation ready to pay a bit extra for products not “Made in China” — to go full gangbusters and divorce. Better start planning now.

Read more here.

Globalization at all costs?

In her website, Michelle Malkin writes in part,

...Dangerous menaces are spreading from mainland China to the United States. Surgical masks and Big Pharma vaccines, however, won’t protect this nation from its infiltration. The problem doesn’t lie with bats. It lies with America’s batty pursuit of globalization at all costs.

Chinese Communist Party agents are using our suicidal pathologies — blind worship of “diversity,” naive exaltation of “cultural exchange” programs, and reckless surrender of our education system — against us for economic espionage, intellectual property theft and world dominance. While Beltway blowhards rail against foreign interference in our elections, Beijing’s hijacking of our classrooms ensues with hardly a peep of political resistance.

Go here to read the many examples Michelle gives.

Restoring America's technological supremacy

At PJ Media, Spengler reviews a book by Graham Allison entitled Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? Spengler writes,

Allison makes the case for appeasement. If you want peace, I counter, prepare for war. That means restoring America's technological supremacy.

...A professor and outgoing director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School, Allison can’t be faulted for timing. In July and August of this year, North Korea’s tests of nuclear-capable missiles with range sufficient to strike American territory put the China problem at the top of our strategic agenda: apart from a military confrontation no one wants, America seems to have no alternative but to ask China to use its good offices to restrain North Korea. As a result, China has more influence in matters that bear on vital American interests. In an August 2017 Wall Street Journal essay that drew public praise from National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Henry Kissinger argued for strategic cooperation with China in the Korean peninsula. McMaster distributed a dozen copies of Allison’s book to senior National Security Council staff earlier this year.

...“Many Americans,” he adds, “have sought refuge in the belief that for all its size and bluster, China’s success is still essentially a story of imitation and mass production.” In fact, “China will surpass the U.S. to become the world leader in research-and-development spending by 2019.”

Allison concludes, “In the three and a half decades since Ronald Reagan became president, by the best measurement of economic performance, China has soared from 10 percent the size of the US to 60 percent in 2007, 100 percent in 2014, and 115 percent today.”

If the current trend continues, China’s economy will be a full 50 percent larger than that of the US by 2023.

Allison observes that China already possesses surface-to-ship missiles that can destroy American aircraft carriers hundreds of miles from its coast, diesel-electric submarines that can run silently on battery power, and satellite-killer missiles.

Allison raises the prospect of a trade war with China that might lead to a shooting war. This is possible, but also most unlikely, for the simple reason that China is prepared to make tactical concessions in the service of longer-term strategic objectives. Beijing does not want to drop the American frog into hot water, but rather to boil it gradually. Nothing would please China more than for the United States to approximate the export profile of Brazil, concentrating on agriculture, extraction, and basic industries, while China dominates high-tech manufacturing.

China can innovate, as Graham Allison reminds us, but it should be added that China cannot innovate nearly as well as the United States. American ingenuity backed by the resources of American government and industry created virtually all the new technologies of the past half-century. We should make China cautious to test us out of fear that American innovation will neutralize their enormous investments in high-tech manufacturing.

America should not fight a trade war with China over declining industries like steel, and should not conjure the specter of rebel provinces by promoting Taiwan’s independence. But we should make China believe that it cannot overtake America’s technological edge for a very long time to come, and fear that American innovation will send its vast investments in existing technologies to the scrap heap.

If we do not rise to China’s challenge, then Allison’s approach will become the default response. We will in fact have no choice but to accept Chinese economic supremacy, including a global lock on manufacturing and trade in high-tech electronics. Our living standard will fall and we will be vulnerable to foreign military threats. Those are the implications of the book that now sits atop the desk of the National Security Council’s senior staff. One would hope and pray that the United States of American can do better.

Read more here.